Mike Call: How Do Video Games Mean?

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Professor Call's lecture on games and video games, and I was extremely impressed with his research. His analysis of a new media form, which is quickly becoming the most abundant in the world, was both enjoyable and critical, and invited further questioning and speculation.
Professor Call began by establishing the parameters of his research. He is not trying to argue that video games are art, as the art community cannot even agree on a definition for art, so there is no sense in trying to include video games in a canon of work that cannot even be defined. Professor Call is concerned with how we analyze games. Other media forms, such as literature and film, have established a vocabulary of terms through which the form can be analyzed. Video games have yet to reach this point, but as the amount of Americans who play video games rises over 50 percent, it is high time that we started thinking about what this form of media is saying.
To help get a grip on the world of video games, Professor Call turned to another branch of his study, which is board games. As board games have been around for a much longer time, anthropologists have already established a few ways of interpreting them. The French intellectual Callois created a few terms(agon, alea, mimicry, and illiny)which analyze a game on its level of competition, its reliance on luck, its ability to mimic real life, and its ability to physically excite or stimulate. Just as these old ideas of luck and strategy are easily applicable to games like Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, the same principles apply to video games. Many video games have high levels of competition,  like Super Smash Brothers, involving multiple players who must actually eliminate others to win, while other games like Little Big Planet have a lower level of competition, as players must work together to work through puzzle presented by the game. Alea, or luck, is low in such games like Call of Duty, where maps are pre-determined, with predictable outcomes, but high in games like Mario Kart, where question mark boxes will equip players with randomized weaponry. Mimicry is perhaps most easily recognized, not just in hyper realistic games like Grand Theft Auto, but also in games like the Sims, which do nothing more than try to mimic everyday life. Video games have always had an aspect of physical excitement, through the use of buttons and joysticks, but this level of involvement has only been heightened through the invention of the Rumble Pack, the Wii, the Kinect, and most recently, the XBOX 1's triggers, which adjust the amount of pressure required to push them down depending on the challenge of the task in the game.
It is also important to analyze the ideologies represented in games. Though games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Grand Theft Auto have taken a good deal of the flack in this department, it is important to analyze other games which at first sight, may seem more benign. Even Settler's Of Catan present a problem for the Western World, with its blatant exclusion of natives on the habitable land. This type of game represents a dream of the 'perfect colonization' where there is no pre-existing culture to deal with, and resources are free and out there for the picking. Issue of race and sex are easily recognizable as the canon of video game heroes is examined, and the scales tip drastically to the side of white athletic males.
Video games are the fastest growing media form in the world, and they can simply not be ignored. Just as film went through a time when it was considered a passing fad, only for youthful entertainment, and corrupt and dangerous for kids, video games is has passed and is passing through those areas. Video games have reached the studio stage, where they are marketed by massive studios, but as programs like Steam and XBOX's independent game program flourish, the day is not far off when video games will join film, in passing out of the studio age and into the auteur arena. Yes. whether they are art or not, video games can simply not be ignored. In the next twenty or thirty years, Professor Call has suggested that the question will not be: "do you play video games?" but simply: "what video games do you play?"
Also, this lecture inspired me to take Professor Call's class this spring all about games and game theory. It is called IHUM 280, and it will be taught on Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:30 to 3:00. Anyone interested in coming would be welcome company!

Concerned Citizen

Ian Hawkes and Erin Willmore

https://soundcloud.com/erin-rainay-willmore/scott-harman-concerned-citizen/s-F1u6T

Meeting Scott Harman was like meeting one of those people you only hear about in magazine articles, but never expect to meet in real life. Just by looking at him, we would have never guessed he spent more than six years in solitary confinement. He even admitted himself that most people who know him, from church and work, don’t know anything about his past or his involvement in the community. For this reason, we decided to do an audio interview. We liked the idea that Scott is a sort of secret hero of the Provo and Orem community, who does not care if people don’t recognize him or even remember his name, and we felt that just having his voice and not any visuals would communicate this sort of faceless and noble service.

Scott’s humility was what was most impressive. He could not even say with great confidence that he was helping those people in the Addiction Recovery Program, but he said that he remembers looking up to his counselors and being strengthened by them, and he therefore hopes that he is helping others. This sort of noble service reminded me of Jared Jakin’s Documentary Ghosts on the Mountain. One thing that impressed me about Jared’s documentary, was that he was not trying to make a work of art for the purpose of causing social change, but he wanted to tell the story of underprivileged people and allow the audience to act for themselves. Scott’s benefit to the community is similar. He is not leading a grand campaign to help addicted individuals. He simply does his best to share his story, and stand as a living example to those who are heavily addicted to harmful substances that there is hope after addiction.

We feel that this piece of art can be helpful to the community as a whole. One thing that we found interesting was that Scott referred to the addiction recovery group as a ‘second family’, a microcosmic community in its own right. This is a community, which for many reasons, goes unnoticed and unappreciated by the larger community of Provo and Orem. Much like Adichie’s speech on ‘The Danger of a Single Story’, it became clear to us that many people in this community have a single story of addicted. Many think they are dangerous, while others think they are weak, or incapable, or simply hopeless. Scott’s story offers a second perspective. Though he is an ex-convict who served more than six years in solitary confinement, he is happily married to a BYU grad and just had his first child with her three months ago. His story is extremely important, not just to those people who are recovering from addiction, but also those who need to understand better how to interact with the addicted community, which is frankly all of us. As we move farther away from Datastan, Scott’s story is just another story that will be important to have in Storyland, helping us understand how to reach out to and strengthen the sub-community of addiction recovery groups which live within our community.

Game for Change

Dinner Quest

Video games have the potential to be powerful motivators for social change, on perhaps an even greater level than any other media form. As players assume the role of another character, that character's concerns become the player's, their pains, worries, and joys shared. It is physically impossible to passively engage with a video game, as engagement implies activity. This became particularly apparent to me as I played Depression Quest for the first time. The difficulties of depression, which I had often attributed to distanced characters in movies and books, became extremely personal. I began to positively recognize potentially depressive qualities in myself, and instead of simply gaining sympathy for the clinically depressed, I found I was able to reach a level of rudimentary empathy.
I believe that video games have the power to change lives, as we place ourselves in others' shoes and have proxy experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. With this in mind, I decided to tackle a social issue that is very dear to my heart by creating Dinner Quest: The Hunt for a Real Meal. About seven years ago, as a budding high school student with the mind of an anarchist but with no particular system to tear down, I turned my eye of scrutiny on the food industry. As I was introduced to interesting food theorists such as Ian Cheney and Michael Pollan, I became extremely alarmed about the culture of food that is developing in the 21st century, and the implications it has on future generations. While serving a mission in Denmark, these concerns were placed mostly to the side due to a fantastically healthy food culture in Scandinavia, but upon my return to the United States of America, home of preservatives, I have begun once more to critically analyze food.
I studied three works specifically for this project. The first is Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', his beautiful critique of mass production in the food industry. Within the book he follows four separate meals all the way back to their origins, and this idea became the main theme for Dinner Quest. This reading was supplemented by 'Hungry City', a book by British author Carolyn Steel. Her book is a more specific examination of how food is consumed within the city, and reveals alarming facts about how far our food really travels before it gets to us. As more and more people in the 21st century live in cities, we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our food, and most of us don't even know what fresh food tastes like any more. The final piece was Ian Cheney's documentary Truck Farm, which is a playful yet instructive study on how farms can be made practically anywhere. Cheney himself begins a farm in the flat bed of his Dodge pick up, and then drives around New York City to meet with other farmers who use rooftops, barges, floor to ceiling windows, and abandoned baseball fields to get back in touch with nature.
All of these texts went in to the creation of Dinner Quest. For this game, I wanted to put the players into a position where they are forced to be accountable for each aspect of their meal. As I began to study the topics myself(especially some fun blog pages about slaughtering chickens)I realized just how agrarian and foreign these types of activities are. It scares me how far removed a plastic wrapped chicken breast in the supermarket is from slitting the throat of a flapping chicken. I hope that Dinner Quest is a reminder that behind every chicken patty served, there was a living chicken. I did not, however, want the game to just be a scary ride through the terrors of slaughter, as many studies of the food industry have been(Food Inc. and The Jungle being classic examples). In my studies of honest farmers, hunters, and gatherers I have noticed a consistently increased respect for nature and life. Those people who slaughter chickens, ironically, seem to have a greater respect for life than the person who has never killed. I hope that Dinner Quest not only reminds players that a lot more went into the creation of their food than they often account for, but that greater satisfaction can be pulled form a closer association with their food at every level of its creation.
In a world full of restaurant ads, fast food drive-thrus, and deliver to your door internet food companies, I believe that this issue is poorly represented in the media. I hope that Dinner Quest makes a difference in the lives of those who play it, and I honestly believe that the closer we can associate with our food the happier we will be, the healthier our bodies and spirits will be, and the better our food will taste.

Play Dinner Quest here:
http://www.philome.la/DavidHawkes14/dinner-quest

Webspinna Battle

This was honestly the most enjoyable project I have done in this class up to date. Not only did it involve aspects of sound design that interest me, but it also introduced an element of live performance that was invigorating and also strengthening. By embracing this aspect of the life performance, my partner Max and I were able to create a work of art that was way better than what could have just been pre-recorded and turned in.

This project also opened a lot of conceptual windows for me as an artist. I really enjoyed Lethem’s ‘Ecstasy of Influence’ and the perspective he took on art. I have been so afraid of copying what other artists create in an effort to not plagiarize, that I have made myself unaware of the value of remixes, not to mention the fact that by the nature of the time I am living in, almost everything I make will be some sort of a remix. The realization that I came to through Lethem’s article is that there is a beauty in poaching. Before, I had always viewed it as a less refined art, but now I think it is beautiful and in a way almost more redeemable, that you can take things that already exist and place them in a new light to give them new meaning.

As Max and I looked more into musical themes that would inform our remix of disco and rock, I also became increasingly impressed with musical remixes. Fantastic groups like ‘The Avalanches’ and ‘Beck’ sample all the time, and when they do, we just accept it as music, and don’t complain. Not to mention fantastic mash ups like ‘Jaydiohead’, another Jay-Z mash up, but this time with Radiohead songs. The combination of tones and lyrics is fantastic! These groups have become a staple in my listening, and I love the idea of making unity out of things that originally are not harmonious.

Max and I really embraced the idea of live performance which was also key in the Webspinna Battle. We put in a good deal of time before the performance, creating a balance between songs and statements from movie and instructional videos. We used the words to act as transitions from one song to another, and as the performance goes on, the line between the two becomes much more blurred, eventually ending in a total mash-up between rock and disco. Once we had this basic skeleton established, we started brainstorming about what we would do to bring the performance to life. Costumes played a big role, and I felt that we were able to make ourselves visually interesting but not distracting. Our ‘battle moves’ were also fun to choreograph, and as I studied famous rockstar moves and Max studied disco dance moves, we were able to pull some fun stuff together, most noticeably the guitar smash. I was really happy with how the final performance turned out. Most exciting, is that I could see the art form continuing in my future, and I have a vision of kids coming together in back alleys and empty basketball courts to audio battle and spread remix across the world. It’s a medium I would love to explore more.

World Building

Dhane Taylor

Ian Hawkes

Kent Thalman

In the world of the composed dead, there are many solutions proposed, but none without controversy.  Several political and religious factions do much by way of persuasion in order to rally others behind them.  There are those in favor of cremation, others that propose reanimation, and several others who are in favor of simply preserving those that have passed on.  The politics as they relate to aesthetics has much to do with the motivations behind each group’s proposition.  For example, if those in favor of preservation are heavily opposed to “dead labor,” then their arguments take a moral aesthetic tone.  You could almost call it a play toward our sympathy and guilt at the same time.  Conversely, the groups in favor of cremation seek a more informative and realistic aesthetic tone.  There is no need to guilt anyone into burning themselves after death.  Rather, their stance is a logical one, seeking to achieve social reform through spatial practicality.  Finally, those who wish to reanimate the deceased more often than not will take a similar tone to logic.  The aesthetics therefore will relate, much to the outrage of extremist groups that find reanimation immoral.

A social reality today is centered not around the time of death as much as near birth.  Abortion is a topic with very difficult texts to navigate, and is a current and important topic of discussion.  While the issue of reanimation is fictional, it can be related to the complexities of current issues such as abortion, illegal labor, xenophobia, etc.  Are not some people treated as if their lives were less important than the high-born today?  And are not others feared because they are considered the “other.”  This happens in every society in today’s world.  Such a discussion potentially navigates and communicates within the confines of this invented reality.  There are potential limitations as well, as is the case with nearly all narratives or artistic platforms.  But the benefits of such a communicative platform is its reach.  Such a fantasy can cause reflection within those who would otherwise refuse to grapple with said issues in the real world.

One example our group drew from in class specifically is that of Effie Trinket and the Capitol’s absurd focus on fashions around a death game. It creates an aspect of the Hunger Games world that wasn’t as explored in the film. It is an advertisement those people would see every day and influence their menial decisions. Comparatively, the people of the world where the dead refuse to decompose would be so accustomed to the bodies that many would not have a strong stance as to what to do with them. With our endeavour, we created public service announcements, government issued messages, and juvenile placards. Each of these were to represent a different decisive extreme aimed at swaying the average citizen’s opinion.

The creation of a world within a fiction piece is always daunting and exciting to me. I will always remember the first time I read ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert. I was absolutely enveloped in the science fiction world he created. What I thought was most impressive with Herbert’s work was how each of his characters were driven by actual social pressures, that interplayed with one another and had correlating sponsors, enemies, and followings. Herbert created a complete system of government, trade, and religion, and his technology and characters were based off of these constructs and felt as though they had grown organically from the world. We tried our best to bring this type of believable culture into our world. We quickly realized that not having bodies decay would lead to a great deal of religious complexity, as well as social problems with responding entities who try to solve those problems. As different viewpoints became clear to us, it seemed natural to break our group into factions, having each of us create artifacts from that certain social view. I feel that in this way we have managed to create a world which is populated with actual social questions that seem relevant and human.

Textual Poaching

There is a special joy in admitting that you like Dungeons and Dragons, almost like telling someone that you secretly have a pet hampster that you’ve never revealed to them before. I am fascinated with how scociety reacts to Dungeons and Dragons, and roleplaying games in general, and have struggled to come to terms with why this and many of my other favorite hobbies are viewed as puerile and lacking substantial content.

My relationship with Dungeons and Dragons has been very much like the Skin Horse’s experience of becoming ‘real’ and loved through long association, from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was about seven, and continued to play on and off with my older brother up until I was a teenager, when I started leading my own games at home with my younger brothers. When I started working at a Boy Scout camp at fifteen, I lead groups of friends in role playing games every summer, and then at college played multiple games with my brother and his wife, a hobby that continues still today. Over the years, the game has become an integral part of who I am, and I feel that only the people who have a similar relationship with the game can understand my relationship with it.

What fascinates me with Dungeons and Dragons, is rather like the ratty stuffed rabbit, it is so often discounted as childish and unimportant, while such plotless games as Modern Warfare are allowed to slip through the cracks as ‘a great adult game’. As I began to analyze the nature of roleplaying, I realized that roleplaying is so unbelievably commonplace in our culture. Particularly at BYU, there is a strong culture of putting your best foot forward, and not admitting your doubts, stresses, or insecurities. We all create a ‘BYU Character’, who we often hide behind, hoping to be able to marry well, get great grades, and slip under the eye of our Ecclesiastical Leaders without ever revealing the real us. I decided to create a BYU Character Sheet, and remixed a number of the character statistics to better fit this vision, as well as superimposing a picture of myself in the background instead of the emasculated barbarian sketches which are the backdrop of most DnD character sheets. I personally believe that everyone should be familiar with the concept of Roleplaying games, as we play them in real life constantly, from our resumes to our Facebook pages.

This project quickly became extremely personal to me. I have always loved Rage Against the Machine, and discovered just recently that their classic album ‘Rage’ is actually an entire album of covers! I was amazed, because each of the songs seems so personally theirs. I similarly began to pour my personality into this project, and quickly became aware how much this idea of masking and roleplaying has effected my life. Most of my childhood and teenage years I was convinced that I had to hide my weaknesses from my parents and especially my friends. I was so insecure with who I actually was, and thought that repenting and changing meant hiding the things you were not happy with. I am just barely beginning to realize that because of this, I have an extremely unclear idea of who I actually am as an individual. This project has changed me spiritually and emotionally, and I have set out to discover who I really am, not just the character I say that I am.